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Alain Locke on the Theoretical Foundations for a Just and Successful Peace

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  • © 2023

Overview

  • Clarifies the systematic character of Locke's philosophy.
  • Attends to under-studied dimensions of Locke's work, such as his economic thinking.
  • Puts Locke in conversation with contemporary debates in cosmopolitanism & democratic theory.

Part of the book series: African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora (AAPAD)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

Alain Locke is most known for his involvement in the Harlem Renaissance. However, he received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard University in 1918, and produced a very large corpus of philosophical work. His work shows him to have been a sophisticated philosopher who thought through practical and theoretical problems regarding the nature of cosmopolitanism, democracy, race, value, religion, art, and education. Although Locke’s philosophical work has been discussed in parts, there has been no theorizing about how his different philosophical commitments fit together. In this book Corey L. Barnes begins to systematize Locke’s philosophical thought, showing how his democratic theory, philosophy of race, and value theory are connected to and undergirded by a commitment to cosmopolitanism. In so doing, Barnes unearths aspects of Locke’s thought—for example, his economic thinking—that have not been accorded attention and reimagines parts of his work about which have been theorized, allwhile bringing Locke into current debates about each subject.

Reviews

"Corey Barnes provides an indispensable and rich elucidation of Alain Locke’s cosmopolitanism and its relationship to democracy. In this book, we get a glimpse of Locke’s wider political philosophical vision of a healthy democracy that places care and concern at the foundation of its proper workings. This is an essential text for anyone looking to understand Locke." (Melvin Rogers, Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Brown University)

"Corey Barnes has figured out a way to systemize Alain Locke’s thought while retaining its spirit. He does this by interpreting Locke’s thought as a sustained effort to think about and create the conditions for a cosmopolitan community in the first half of the 20th century. Barnes’ Locke is a philosophically sophisticated, thick racial conservationist who battles against what we would call 'white supremacy' today. He is also a proponent of the view that a cultural democracy—undergirded by local, regional, and international law—would benefit humans more than other ways of living together. There is a lot to learn from Barnes’ Locke." (Dwayne Tunstall, Professor of Philosophy, Grand Valley State University)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA

    Corey L. Barnes

About the author

Corey L. Barnes is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, USA.

Bibliographic Information

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